We are excited to announce the recipients of the Starr Foundation Student Fellows grant for 2018.
This is the eleventh cohort of students who are awarded a Travel and Research Grant towards their academic engagement on India and China. Students undergo a competitive application and interview process and commit to conducting field research in India or China for a minimum of three weeks during the spring or summer.
Brief biographies of the Student Fellows can be found below. Congratulations to all of them!
2018 Student Fellows
Feng Chen
Feng Chen is a doctoral student in the Sociology Department, at the New School for Social Research. She specializes in social mobility, migration, and Asian Studies. Her research includes, but not limited to the examination of Asian international students’ migration choices to stay or leave the United States, Asian immigrants’ sociocultural integration to the United States, and Chinese special economic zones’ borders and migration. She also teaches courses at College of Staten Island and Brooklyn College of City University of New York, including “Minority Groups” and “Mass Communication”. Prior to her pursuit of an academic career, she had served as a news producer and researcher at international media in Beijing, covering political, economic, and social stories for The Christian Science Monitor, ITN (UK), and France 24.
Jiyoung Cho
Jiyoung Cho is a Ph.D. student in Politics at the New School for Social Research. Her research interests lie at the nexus of the global political economy and cultural politics, with a thematic focus on state policies, infrastructure, borders, economic development, and assemblages. She relies on interdisciplinary frameworks of cultural anthropology, geography, postcolonial studies, and gender studies.
Stephen Graf
Stephen Graf is in his second year of doctoral studies in Politics at the New School for Social Research, with a major concentration in comparative politics and a minor in global politics. His research interests include the structure of political institutions, inclusiveness in public service delivery, state-society relations, and social movements in India. He will be using the India-China Institute Starr Research Grant to begin fieldwork on the interface between university student organizations and political parties in schools around Delhi. He has worked in the Permanent Observer Office for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) to the United Nations for over five years. There he followed closely the intergovernmental negotiations on the framing of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Stephen went to Swarthmore College for his undergraduate study and has master’s degrees from both New York University and the New School for Social Research.
David López García
David López García is a doctoral candidate in Public and Urban Policy at the New School. He holds an M.A. degree in Comparative Public Policy from FLACSO campus Mexico, and a B.A. degree in Management from the University of Guadalajara. Before joining the doctoral program, David served in the Mexican government for eight years in positions ranging from transparency and public participation advisor to the chief of staff at the Ministry of Planning and Evaluation of the State of Jalisco. In the field of civil society, he was a member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Civil Society Consultative Council for Mexico, and coordinator of the Lab for Innovation in Democracy (LID). His works were published by the Mexican Network of Urban Research (RNIU), the University of Guadalajara, and the Journal of Public Deliberation. David’s doctoral dissertation is on the comparative study of the political economy of infrastructure and intra-urban inequality.
Utsa Hazarika
Utsa Hazarika is an artist from Delhi, India. She has been an artist-in-residence in India, a member of Khoj International Artists’ Association, Serendipity Arts Trust, TIFA Working Studios, and the BASE center for an art and philosophy program with GRENZ film (Austria). Her works have screened at Whitechapel Gallery’s Open Screenings (UK), Berkshire Art Association (US), Target Gallery (US), and the Serendipity Arts Festival.